Tips to Push Your Business – Blogging, Marketing, Listening

Bear in mind that a blog is only likely to benefit your business if you have online or telephone sales; as people may otherwise be unable to buy from you. You also need to update it regularly with interesting content, otherwise people will get bored of it; but even if your blog only has a small effect, it still wont cost you much.

Two popular blog sites are

Another point worth noting is that monitoring industry blogs is a great way to keep up with developments in your field of business.

Monitor Your Marketing

Although most businesses carry out marketing activities, only a small proportion effectively monitor and alter their activities according to how successful they are.

There are various ways you can monitor the success of your marketing. The simplest method being to look at your sales and whether there is an increase when you are marketing. You will of course need to take into account any usual variations in sales (e.g. Over the Christmas or Easter periods).

By monitoring your marketing, you can work out whether you are spending too much or too little. If you spend £2000 to bring in £1500, why not consider whether you could still gain £1500 by only spending £1500, or even £1000? If you spend £2000 and gain £4000, why not see whether £2500 brings in £5000, or £3000 brings in £6000?

While we would very rarely recommend that any business stops all marketing activity, if you are spending money but getting little in return then why not consider whether that money could be better spent towards on improving your sales or other forms of marketing (e.g. PR, web marketing, a new/improved website, etc)

Make Listening and Learning Important Parts of Your Sales Process

While quality, price and persuasion are extremely useful parts of the selling process; a surprising number of businesses overlook the importance of listening.

By listening carefully to what your customers want, you can adjust what you offer to match it, and learn which areas to focus your promotions on. By listening to customer’s reservations and worries you can learn what to focus your development on.

The other big benefit of listening more is that your customers will feel less pressured to buy; and are likely to consider your business more trustworthy for taking the time to hear and respond to their needs and concerns.

If you have business customers then listening also helps you to learn about what they do, and how your product/service affects them. By understanding what your customers do and what they want, you (or your salespeople) are much better equipped to sell to them.

There are many examples in history where businesses have won sales and contracts by simply understanding the customer better.

One well known example is of a major manufacturer of Medical Equipment; they were competing against an almost identical product with an almost identical price. They won the s ale bec ause their salesperson took a little bit of time to learn about what the customer used the product for, and demonstrated this while speaking to them. The fact that the company had bothered to understand their needs made the difference between the two competitors.

Article Index

1. 10 Tips to Push Your Business for Minimal Cost
2. Tips to Push Your Business – Blogging, Marketing, Listening
3. Tips to Push Your Business - Legislation, email, free software